03.27.20 Violet Buttercups

Liverwort, Hepatica nobilis, offers us such delightful beauty in spite of a name appropriate to a medieval herbal. Hepatica is in the buttercup family and doesn’t really qualify as a Spring ephemeral, since its leaves last year round. But these leathery, three-lobed leaves with a vague semblance to the human liver are responsible for its name. Ancient Greek physicians claimed this plant could be used as an effective treatment for liver disorders, which for them included cowardice and freckles! More recently herbalists, subscribing to the debunked “doctrine of signatures” claimed that “nature marks each growth…according to its curative benefit” falsely believed there might be some pharmacological benefit for liver problems. The Japanese have long recognized this flower’s delicate beauty and have cultivated a number of varieties since the Edo era.

A white instance of Hepatica found just a quarter-mile from the violet-colored plant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Otto Thomé’s Flora von Deutschland, Osterreich und der Schweiz, 1885.